Readers' comments

Yes - good in a way but surely there should be a middle way between the scant few years of protection (that drives high prices) afforded the pharmaceutical industry and the preposterous century or so of protection afforded to media of all kinds (presumably including this note?!). Are we really keen to tell our children to write a song and have the live profits still flow to their aged grandchildren rather than develop a cure for cancer whose royalties might not even last to their own retirement?

The WTO rules that have resulted in the opening of hitherto protectionist pharmaceutical markets in these new markets could only have been ratified if international pharmaceutical companies had been assured that a sufficiently developed legal framework has been instituted in those countries, eg to protect their patents from rampant piracy in the emerging economies.

And yet, despite these efforts to assert intellectual property, this article clearly indicates that 'generic' companies are experiencing a boom. Why?

'The economist' should do a special report on how 'generic' comapnies have managed to sustain such growth despite the pressure, and if 'conventional' drug companies like Pfizer and GSK have somehow entered into an agreement with generic companies (eg because imitation drugs in developing economies that cost much less) that have enabled the former to profit from the latter's growth.

Ogriv - The myth that big pharma spends huge money discovering new drugs is exactly that - a myth. Big pharma actually discovers very few new drugs. Most of the discovery is done with public money. Big pharma steps in once this work has been done. So in essence they are making their big profits off the back of the taxpayer.The reality is they spend more on marketing than on R&D. And as pikfloe aptly pointed out, when the patent runs out they step in with a slightly reengineered patented drug. The FDA approval process is so weak that pharmas are not required to demonstrate that their re-engineered drugs are better than the old ones - simply that they are better than a placebo.

Thank goodness for the generics. Thanks to them medicines become cheaper, either because the generics are cheaper than the original medicines, or the holder of the original patent is forced to sell the original medicine at cheaper prices.

I buy a medicine which the holder of the original patent is now selling the original medicine cheaper than the generic one.

My daughter, who is a pharmacyst/biochemist, tells me that the pharmacies that prepare their own medicines, instead of selling the ready packed pills manufactured by the big multinationals , have to put obscenely high margins (1000% mark up is not uncommon) on the medicines otherwise people will not believe that the pills cointain any medicine at all.

If the small pharmacyst, which prepares the pills manually, has to put obscene margins and yet sells the manually made medicines for a fraction of the industrialized medicine, one can imagine what margins those big pharmas make even in the generic medicines. It is a rip off!

Yeah! There is the cost of developing the drug and even more significant of approving and marketing them. But still they make gazillions of dollars on the back of the sick people.

It seems to me that all intelectually properties should have a much shorter period before falling into the public domain.

Uh, what company or industry is not all about profit? If they're not, they won't last too long! Generic drug companies are ONLY profit. They do not need to put in any time for R&D once a drug company's data exclusivity runs out.

The generic drug industry is prospering because drug manufacturing is cheap and easy but inventing and developing is not. It is no surprise that Teva, which started off as a little unknown company in Israel, has become a generic giant because of its low production cost and high sales volume.

There is no need for Teva nor Barr to pay for an expensive arduous drug discovery process, from research labs to clinical trials, that eventually leads to an FDA approval. Big Pharma has to make their profits from all this hard work by coming up with a new formulation or a new indication for an original compound. Meanwhile, somebody has to absorb or pay for the cost of a new drug or an old drug with a new indication.

brownte:It is very typical for big pharma to market a slightly re-engineered version of the original drug after the patent expiry. This allows them to charge the original price because they trust that their marketing will be convincing enough to fool the consumer.Alas, I can't remember any examples off the top of my head but this is a well known strategy. Big Pharma is all about profit. Their manufacturing and development costs are too high to compete with the generics so they reinvent products to keep their margins high.